Until the 1990s, socialist politics in the West had long been distorted in
the Cold War's wilderness of ideological mirrors. The perspective
that the Soviet Empire was somehow historically „progressive“
in comparison with the „West“ (it wasn't), competed with
Social Democracy's notion that it could abolish capitalism gradually
through bourgeois parliamentarianism (it couldn't and no longer even
pretends to try). With Stalinism and Social Democracy now out of the
picture for any meaningful rethinking of socialism, the Trotskyists
have plodded on as best they can, continuing to blame the victories
of Thatcher/Reaganism and the Clinton/Blair Third Way on a „crisis
of leadership“ in the „traditional“ organizations
of the working class.

Other
leftists have rejected class politics altogether. Whilst the
„anti-capitalist“ protests in Seattle, Washington, D.C.
and London over the last year have included sections of organized
labor, there are many activists (especially within the anarcho-green
and „Third Worldist“ spectrum) who see the
„traditional“
organizations, such as unions and socialist parties, as irrelevant to
their struggles if not as pillars of the rule of capitalist
„productivism.“ Moishe Postone says in TIME, LABOR AND
SOCIAL DOMINATION that because the proletariat is tied to „the
form of labor that constitutes and is constituted by structures of
alienation,“ then capital cannot be opposed from the
proletarian standpoint.

CAPITAL, REVOLT, MARX-HEGEL

Postone
is one of a growing number of radical theoreticians who believe that
critical engagement with Marx's CAPITAL must also tackle the question
of how Hegel's idealist dialectic relates to Marx's critique. Postone
says that „Whereas Hegel's Subject is transhistorical and
knowing, in Marx's analysis it is historically determinate and
blind.“ This „historical Subject“ is, in Postone's
analysis, capital; which, unlike „Hegel's GEIST,“ does
„not possess self-consciousness.“ Therefore, the notion
of a „self-grounding“ and „self-moving“
Subject must, in Postone's view, be distinguished from the
„sociohistorical Subject“ in Marx's analysis.

Marx
criticized Hegel for subjectivizing an abstraction of
self-consciousness rather than real humanity; and as Peter Hudis
points out:
„It
should not be hard to see that this inversion of subject and object
in Hegel mirrors one of the perverse features of capitalism....the
product of our activity takes on a life of its own and shapes our
lives according to its dictates. Subjective laboring activity becomes
a mere means for the self-expansion of capital.“(1)
But,
as Hudis points out, because capital appears now more than ever as an
absolutizing force of domination and destruction (and „ultimately
uncontrollable“ according to István Mészáros
in BEYOND CAPITAL), theorists tend to see in Hegel's concept of the
Absolute Idea an expression of capitalism's insane logic; in which,
as Mészáros sees it, we are seemingly held under the
„tyrannical spell of the World Spirit.“

Whereas
Postone sees „capital, as analyzed by Marx [a]s a form of
social life with metaphysical attributes-those of the absolute
subject,“ Hudis counters that „this implies the
rejection, not just of the proletariat, but also the subjectivity of
philosophy.“(2)

I
have taken the Postone debate as a starting point in defending the
subjectivity of philosophy because, whether Hegel's concept of the
absolute is seen as representing a „totalizing“ monster
or as a „new beginning,“ the issues involved are clearly
important. Postone's book, like Mészáros' BEYOND
CAPITAL, has had some impact within activist circles in recent years
(though Mészáros' analysis, it should be said, does not
share Postone's dismissal of organized labor). Bearing in mind that
Marx at one point says that Hegel philosophizes „from the
standpoint of modern political economy,“ I will draw out some
important developments in Hegel scholarship which may help to show
how Hegel's „absolute negativity“ might relate to a
philosophy of revolutionary anti-capitalism.

For
many Hegel commentators, beginning with Schelling who was his
contemporary, Hegel appears to be trying to show how the Idea, as a
metaphysical abstraction, itself „creates“ objectivity in
a theological sense; as if the material world was only the
self-reflection of the Idea; and as if the philosopher himself was
some sort of guardian of pure philosophic form.

For
some critics, such as the logical positivist Karl Popper, Hegel
offers a metaphysical idealism drawn from Plato's earlier version. In
Plato's cosmology, the relationship of the Idea to Nature is
determined by a „demiurge“ who makes the world out of
primordial chaos; an external determination of the same order as the
„divine“ philosophic „guardians“ who impose
their pure forms and eternal truths on Plato's ideal republic.
Indeed, it seems hardly an accident that the three sections of
Hegel's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES correspond with
Plato's main works (the PAREMIDES is concerned with Logic, the
TIMAEUS with Nature, and the REPUBLIC with Mind).(3)

With
Hegel's approach however, the relationship between Idea and Nature is
quite different from all idealist philosophers, from Plato to Kant,
for whom form is hidden from and opposed to particularity. In Hegel's
dialectic, the universality, formulated as SOCIAL-consciousness, is,
as Mészáros puts it in MARX'S THEORY OF ALIENATION,
inherent in the „dynamically evolving particularity.“ As
Hegel expresses it, the whole and the parts condition each other and
are equal to each other, but the whole „is not equal to them as
a parts, the whole is reflected unity,“ which means, in Raya
Dunayevskaya's interpretation, that „the whole is not only the
sum total of the parts, but has a pull on the parts that are not yet
there.“(4)

In
Hegel's PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND (1807), the subject of „absolute
knowing“ experiences the „certainty“ of objectivity
and the substantiality of subjectivity. Dunayevskaya comments that
Hegel is thus able to „proceed to treat both knowledge and
reality in the form of categories [in the SCIENCE OF LOGIC] because
they do include historical reality, present reality, as well as the
long road of thought about it.“(5)

The
PHENOMENOLOGY culminates in Absolute Knowledge/Absolute Knowing. In
one of the most influential commentaries on the Phenomenology,
Alexandre Kojéve, the French existentialist, says in
INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL, that Hegel's Absolute Knowledge
is the arrival of a present that is aware of progress in relation to
the past. In this science of the way in which knowledge
„appears,“
human progress is seen to be mediated by a knowledge which is at the
same time „comprehending memory“ and internalizing
„recollection,“ and the „Golgotha“ of
Absolute Spirit. But the end is also a beginning of another science
in which Hegel leaves behind the temporal concerns of the
PHENOMENOLOGY for the science of „pure thought“ (the
Logic). Hegel's Smaller Logic forms the first of his three-part
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES.

The
second part, THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, follows after the LOGIC and
deals with chemistry, geology, botany, zoology and anthropology-all
as understood in the empirical sciences of his day. Nature here is
portrayed as the „Other“ of the Idea, but at the same
time Hegel sees Nature as representing the Idea's essential FREEDOM.
John Burbidge points out that in Hegel's larger work on logic, the
SCIENCE OF LOGIC, the discussion of the organic existence of
„life“
is concerned with the teleological development of a thinking subject.
This subject, presented in a syllogistic form, is a living
individual, motivated by „feeling,“ who overcomes
PARTICULAR obstacles to his or her concept of „purpose“
and then achieves a measure of universality. (6)

Within
Hegel's „system,“ the self-determined idea of the Logic,
once unfolded, „freely releases“ Nature -as understood in
all its diversity and objectivity. But in Nature, the logical does
NOT itself generate the sequential categories; for subjectivity only
comes at the end, in the concept of the telos.

Dieter
Wandschnieder suggests that, although Hegel's concept of nature
doesn't represent an intuition of the now established fact of natural
evolution, what does emerge at the end of his THE PHILOSOPHY OF
NATURE is nonetheless the concept of „a being capable of
thought.“ Wandschnieder sees the relationship between Logic,
Nature and Mind in Hegel's dialectic as working itself out through
the mediation of „idealized nature or naturalized idea“
in the form of „culture realized in a physical world.“(7)

Burbidge,
commenting on Popper's assertion that Hegel's dialectic was an
attempt to „draw real physical rabbits out of purely
metaphysical hats,“ points out that „a rabbit has its own
independent life before the magician went on stage.“
Furthermore, „Hegel's magic comes not from producing something
out of nothing, but from detailed reflection on the way the brute
facts of existence acquire significance and meaning, even as our
sense of meaning and significance organizes the way we read the facts
of experience.“

ABSOLUTE NEGATIVITY

Hegel
could only transcend the limits of his age in an abstract manner; to
do more would mean going beyond philosophy. Or as Marx put it, it
would mean going beyond „interpretation“ of the world-the
world in which reigns the split between mental and manual labor
through the social division of labor in a class-divided society.

For
Dunayevskaya, because Hegel's absolutes end up being permeated with
„absolute negativity,“ he remains relevant to the
dialectic of labor and capital and Marx's concept of the „revolution
in permanence.“

In
Volume 1 of CAPITAL, in the chapter on „the absolute general
law of capitalist accumulation,“ Marx writes that capital,
which cannot produce wealth without producing poverty, eventually
„begets its own negation,“ the organized working class.
In Dunayevskaya's view, „free creative power assures the plunge
to freedom“ as the „unifying force,“ and „since
absolute negativity, the new foundation, is not 'something merely
picked up, but something DEDUCED and PROVED,' this subjective
couldn't but be objective, so much so that it extends to the SYSTEM
ITSELF“ as it becomes richer and more concrete.(8)

Self-realization
as self-determined movement must also extend to the Universal. As
Hegel puts it in the PHENOMENOLOGY:

„The
object as a whole is the mediated result (the syllogism) or the
passing of universality into individuality through specification,
also the reverse process from the individual, to universal through
canceled individuality or specific determination.“(9)

If
new dimensions of the „Quest for Universality“ (to use
Marx's phrase)-Black, Feminist, Gay, „Green“-are to
redefine the notion of „socialism,“ then Hegel's absolute
negativity can be articulated as negation within the movement from
practice of external obstacles to freedom which were themselves
negations of earlier obstacles and as negation of internal barriers
to new developments of subjectivity.

Hegel, LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, vol. 2, p. 49. See Gary
K. Browning, „Transitions to and from Nature in Hegel and
Plato,“ in „Hegel's Metaphysics of Nature,“
BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN, No. 26, 1992.

4.

Raya Dunayevskaya, „Rough Notes on Hegel's SCIENCE OF LOGIC,“
Part 3, Doctrine of Essence, NEWS & LETTERS, April 1999. See also
THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, 2806.